Wishing you all a VERY Happy New Year, full of femme-tastic creative energy and connections!
Thanks so much to Tamadhur Al-Aqeel, who reached out after she shared her hilarious HOT JOE BIDEN in our Holiday Micro-Read Hook-Up , saying she’d built upon her original 1 page and written the short piece below to say GOODBYE to 2020 and hello to all good things in 2021.
Check it out and thank you to the team of LAFPI Instigators she assembled: Director Kila Kitu and actors Julie Pasco, Nakasha Norwood and Justin Huen (an LAFPI virgin, but he’ll be back…).
Here’s to fantasies in all shapes and sizes, and the women+ artists (and allies) who make them come true!
If seeing is believing then all I want for Christmas is that we see…
It is the Most Wonderful Time of the Year
There’s Christmas music 24 hours of the day (radio, TV, internet, on the streets, in your head, the one that you hum unconsciously).
There are Christmas lights and decorations on lawns and stoops of homes along the quietest streets and the busiest corners.
There’s anticipation in the air for some mystery and wonder.
There is a Santa Claus that lives in everyone’s heart.
Though without the means or the money, and there are miles, rules, illnesses and the pandemic that separate us from our loved ones, there is still the wish, hope and desire in our hearts and imagination to make dreams come true.
Believe.
Peace Y’All.
Painting by Tom Browning. Courtesy of Santa’s Time Off.
When I was a very young girl my dream was to be an astronaut. In 2nd grade, during class, I stared out the window and imagined being in space, while the teacher’s voice droned on like an unidentified buzz. I looked towards the azure and wondered what’s out there? and where and how do I fit in in this enormous puzzle?
Funny, many many decades later, I am still the same in my thinking, though the desire to be an astronaut has long passed. What do I dream and hope for now? I am at the arc in my life, the shooting star no more, and the trajectory is the downward bend. This is a combination of losing momentum and gravity pulling my mass towards the center of the earth.
This is life. Decay is inevitable. I accept… though I still struggle. Surrender is not easy when I remember how I used to climb tall mountains, and ran down the trail fast – hopped from rock to rock, light on my feet and my shirt drenched from clean sweat. These days, I sit in front of a laptop with a tape over the camera, hiding from unknown intruders while my fingers hop over letters and special characters that decorate virtual documents and pages.
One definition of life is a measurement of time. In the obit section, a name is listed with a date of birth and a date of death. There was a beginning and then an end. Between the bookends describes what the person did and who was left behind.
Imagine a straight beam of light shooting out of a super giant star, like “Deneb” (10 to the 5th degree in solar units luminosity). Its light has been traveling for several light years to reach our eyes. One day, the bright light of “Deneb” will fade and die. But we wouldn’t know this in our human life, because the light reaching us now is a view of the past. “When we look out across the Universe, we’re also peering back in time.” – Ethen Siegel, Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/09/07/are-any-stars-visible-in-the-night-sky-already-dead/?sh=287b5f77809f
As a kid looking towards the stars I was seeing myself but not recognizing myself. I was searching for the self, when I already am the self. I see therefore I am.
Two of my plays have been published. My one act adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s short story “The Nose” is available from YouthPLAYS, and my Bosnian war crimes play “A Patch of Earth” is included in a pricey collection from the University of Wisconsin Press with the sexy title “Theatre of Genocide.”
Over the years, Im always happy to send pdfs of various other titles. But now, I’ve taken the plunge and started self-publishing my work.
It started when an old public radio pal Cash Peters asked me why everything I did was ephemeral. Radio stories went out over the air and disappeared into the ether. Plays came alive before an audience for a limited number of nights and then the lights went out. Where was tangible evidence of my creativity?
He wasn’t the only one who thought that way. The general public seems to take “authors” more seriously. When my first children’s mystery “Welcome to Washington Fina Mendoza” was published two years ago, friends and family suddenly took me more seriously. I was a BOOK author. I had tangible evidence of my creative output, something they could hold in their hand and put on a bookshelf and wrap up in pretty paper to give to a favorite child.
Of course, given the state of the publishing industry, getting our plays and books published is a gigantic crapshoot. The “Big Five” publishers in New York have again consolidated to become the “Big Four.” Covid has shut down not just Broadway, but Lort houses, community theatres, even high school drama programs across the country, dealing a severe blow to publishers of plays. I felt fortunate that any of my plays came out in print.
But that was then. This is now. I hate waiting for somebody else to say “yes” to my work. I’ve self- produced several of my plays. Why not self-publish?
Last week, my acting edition of “A Patch of Earth” went live on Amazon, published by Chesapeake Press, a publishing house named after my warrior cat who lost her life to a coyote.
Also live, a Teacher’s Guide to my first Fina Mendoza mystery. This wonderful publisher (me) then decided that the first Fina book deserved a second edition with a better cover and a more user-friendly size. It also deserved a hardback version from a distributor that could get it into libraries – something my first publisher was unable to do.
Are you tired of waiting around for someone else to believe in your work? Are you ready to join the legions of writers who are publishing their own stories? Here’s my step-by-step guide to publishing your own plays. I will warn you: the software requirements are a pain in the neck.
There are two main players in the self-publishing game: Amazon and Ingram. The latter is not just a printer, but also the distributor that most libraries use to purchase books. (It also costs $25-$50 to use while Amazon is free.) If you have a play that you want to see on library shelves, you’ll need to use Ingram. I use both.
Since you’re your own copy editor, carefully look through your script for errors. And look again. I promise you: there will be mistakes.
Sign up for KDP on Amazon and/or Ingram Spark’s self publishing platform. There are many, many pages of information you’ll have to supply, including an ISBN number. (NOTE: Amazon will give you a free one, but then they end up as the publisher of record. I purchase my own ISBNs at a website called Bowker. They also sell the barcodes that go on the back cover.) There are also categories to choose to optimize searches, keywords, etc. (This is more important for books than plays, but there’s a wonderful software program that will help you identify these keywords and categories.)
Cut and paste your script into the template, using standard script formatting. (I use the old fashioned version with character names in caps at the left margin.)
Print out a copy and look for errors – a missed word, bad formatting, etc.
Sign up for Adobe Acrobat Pro DC’s free trial period and change your play from Word to a PDF. (NOTE: just printing as a pdf from word doesn’t work for some reason.)
Upload the pdf to Amazon and/or Ingram.
Design a cover using the templates provided by Amazon and Ingram or hire a designer. You can also noodle around on Canva’s book cover creator. The only problem is that it only creates a front cover, not the back. (Reedsy is a great place to find design professionals for covers or even interior layout. It also offers a free software program that will turn your print script into an e-version.)
Publish!
You can purchase discounted author copies of the scripts, though you have to pay for shipping, even if you are an Amazon Prime member. And you have to do all your own marketing (another topic for another day). But now you have a printed script that actors can use for rehearsals, a professional looking paperback that you can hand to a director or producer, and tangible evidence that indeed, you are a playwright. You can even wrap it up in pretty paper and give it to your parents to prove it.
There is no secret to doing. I have found over the past few months- almost a year now, that Sister Corita wasn’t lying when she said, “The only rule is the work.” I have found that leaning in and reaching out to colleagues, other artists of color and those who call themselves “allies” more often than not is not a great use of time and that most often or not it leads to no action. That often it can become a distraction in the way of doing the work. Now as I say this I will contradict as I have learned many lessons from that Art of Leaning In and Reaching Out. It was an idea I took seriously when I heard Sheryl Sandberg discuss this topic with journalist Norah O’Donnell in 2013 just as I was starting to take my idea of Theatre Roscius and birth it. It was perfect timing as I wanted to learn how to build a theatre company with a new perspective on how it could exist. I knew for me I wanted to absorb the minds of the women who had already paved a way and the women who were finding new ways of approaching the work in real time. And so I emailed. I called. I listened. I asked friends of friends. I leaned in at every corner and I learned how I needed and wanted Theatre Roscius to exist.
In working with a myriad of women as well as men, I discovered feelings may get hurt, and egos will be tested in the face of miscommunication, yet the work is the tie that binds and uplifts us. I also discovered that you can lean in and you will receive no reply, no answer, no support and you will have to find ways to continue your work. You will need to conjure and create your own new ways to continue to make and manifest those ideas that simmer in the back of your mind. That you will have to use all your energy and lean in to yourself. This is most certainly true for Women of Color who most often will be overlooked when “leaning in” occurs at arts organizations, theatre castings, or writer development workshops where often one Woman of Color seems to be “good” enough. Those will be the times when leaning into yourself and digging deep into your superpowers you’ve been gaining over the years will be fully tested and put into glorious use.
Although there is a new awakening occurring in the world of theatre and new ways of “leaning in” are being done, it may take years for change to fully open its doors to new ways of how theatre can live, for we know there must be visionary ways of bringing in new voices to expand on how the American Theatre can be. Leaning in requires focused intention and commitment; it will not sustain band-aid fixtures but will require consistency, thinking beyond along with bold moves and brave hearts.
I write this with the focus that although “leaning in” is vital it can not distract us from doing the work-alone if necessary. I am inspired as I see Artists go out of the box and risk it all for the work. I am excited for what the end of the year brings to the world of theatre and what will come in 2021 for all us who write down ideas in the midst of a fire and turn them into tangible magic. For those of us who find ways to tell stories when traditional spaces are not an option. I write this for those of us who do not focus on securing a seat at the table or being in the room where it happens because you are creating a new seat at a new table in a new room where new ways of making work are happening.
As writers, we are trained to find patterns and story in our everyday tragedies and tribulations. We look for meaning. We look for bad guys and good guys. We look for connections, arcs, morals, lessons.
This is both a blessing and a curse.
Theatre artists will work long hours for little to no pay because we believe in what we do. Because we think we’re lucky. Because we have glorified the starving artist trope. Because we have to pay our dues, which we have interpreted to mean that we have to be okay with being treated like shit or underpaid or burnt out and so exhausted from working on other people’s visions that we have no time for our own.
There’s a whole thing going down about The Flea in New York right now, about their practices doing exactly what I described. I never worked with them, have no intimate knowledge of what happened. But this particular exchange hit me as truthful in a universal way:
I used to wonder if I should have moved to New York to be a playwright. At some point I blamed my choice for staying in Southern California as the reason I had no real playwriting career. Whatever the hell that means….I mean really. I don’t know. Do you? I used to think playwriting could be a career and now I’m not so sure.
I stayed here for many reasons. Not the least of which I was afraid, yes. But I also had a grandmother who I was very close with, already in her 80s by the time I graduated college. And a younger brother turning 7. I wanted to be a part of their lives. For her, it was the last decade of her life. I was already projecting into a future of grief, and I wanted to plan for that. I could be a granddaughter and sister across the country. But not in the way I wanted to. I figured I could still be a playwright here just as well and still be the person I wanted to be. So I stayed.
I used to wonder if I should have gone to NY to work at places like The Flea. But if I had made that choice, 13 years ago when I was leaving undergrad, I would still be here, in the middle of a pandemic, the whole industry shut down and scrambling, and sins surfacing because we no longer have anything to lose.
And I’d be alone in a little apartment in NY. Maybe with another production or two under my belt. Maybe. But just as broke and confused and wondering if I should have stayed in LA all those years ago.
And I’d be grieving my grandmother just the same.
Because she died yesterday.
It’s a long story that I don’t think anyone wants to read. But she and I both contracted COVID from her caregiver, who we had just hired to come in to my parents home, where my grandmother was now living, to help her exercise and eat and be well a few times a week. I’d met the caregiver that first day and spent a lot of time showing her around. She didn’t know she’d been exposed before coming to us.
So my grandmother and I both got sick. It has been a very long month.
Here is where the blessing of the writer species comes in. I look at the whole arc of the story, and I’m grateful I stayed close by. I was able to be close with her, help her where I could, and be next to her while she died at home yesterday afternoon. So many people do not get that small gift right now. To be able to say goodbye. To know you did something, even if it was not enough to conquer death. I’m glad I did not give up who I hoped I could be for the chance to work at The Flea.
Here’s the curse.
I’m angry. I’m angry at everyone refusing to wear masks, who take risks that are intentionally exposing others. For companies who do not, after 9 months in a pandemic, have even the minimal amount of education and systems to at least find proper protection.
I’m angry at the idea that art can only be made on a little island on the east coast. I’m angry at everyone who has exploited others, including myself for buying into it and working in that system.
In my happy post, I wrote that the pandemic has shown how racist, selfish, lazy, entitled, self-driven rather than community driven we all are. And I stand by that. And I’m angry about it.
But, my default is to look for meaning and clarity in all this, to organize it into a story I can understand. But my anger does not work like that. I am going to spin my wheels on that search for years. I will never have an answer that feels like enough.
I think every grief is different. For each person, and each loss.
We’ve been grieving the loss of theatre for 9 months. It has looked different for everyone.
I’m still figuring out what my grief looks like right now. It has been almost 28 hours.
Coming Soon: Welcome to Meadowlark Falls – Christmas At Home
There will be a sad post. That will come next. Because it always does.
But this is the happy one.
There are things that make you hopeful. New government leadership. The blessing and land acknowledgement before the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. The Bath & Bodyworks candle sale. You know.
When it comes to theatre, I’m happy that many of us theatre-makers have been trying to innovate, trying to find ways to connect through the digital world, trying to make accessibility something that is baked into our new structures in the new chapter of theatre, whatever that turns out to be. As someone who has always been a cross-genre writer and interested in the expansion of universes, this has been an intellectually interesting time.
This has been one of the worst years in recent history, for sure. All the memes would agree with that.
In many ways, this year has showed us our worst selves. We are racist, selfish, lazy, entitled, self-driven rather than community driven. Right now, my state of mind wants to focus on these things. It really does. But I do have a bad habit of wanting to find the good in the shit. I think it is a survival mechanism. I want there to be meaning where there is none. And often, there is none.
This is the happy post. Just a reminder.
To focus on theatre here, I think most of us felt, in our cores, that the ways things were running were not good or sustainable or even what we wanted. And this moment, if it’s anything at all, is a time to experiment, to not lean on our old habits but try new ways of telling stories.
One way I’ve been starting to explore alternative ways of theatre is through postal plays. There is a national wave of postal plays coming up in the new year. Read all about it here in American Theatre Magazine. I’ll be writing and producing my own play for the wave. Postal plays use either in total or in part the US Postal service to tell their story. The universe of the play becomes a tangible object that arrives at your door. These plays can allow for multimedia inclusion, audience interaction, and immersion, all in the safety of the home.
I directed the workshop last year, and for Christmas At Home, I also took on the role of director, but really the creation and organization of all the story beats and elements have been a group effort between Lori, myself, our production manager Alexis Robles and video and audio editor Sara Haddadin. It has truly been a collaboration in many ways that “normal” theatre sometimes isn’t. We’re selling packages now through December 11. There are only a limited amount available, so I hope you check it out.
The Meadowlark Falls Town Council Meeting does not go as planned. Top Left to Right: Roman Dearborn (Amir Levi), Trish Blish (Keiana Richard), Douglass Patel (Anil Margsahayam). Middle Left to Right: Genevieve Snow (Taylor Ashbrook), Andy (Samantha Frontera), Noel (Nicholas McDonald). Bottom Left to Right: Jenny Snow (Carley Herlihy) and Whitney (Carene Rose Mekertichyan).
This is a light-hearted holiday experiment, but I think this is only one of many ways in which theatre can continue to explore interacting with audiences in new ways, even if those old ways are as old as the post office. Sometimes it is not only about creating new tools, but finding new ways to use the old ones.
That’s what makes me hopeful. There are a lot of terrible things to throw out and rebuild. And there are a lot of old things can be repurposed, reframed, and reused.
It sometimes takes extra work. And extra energy. And sometimes you don’t have that in a pandemic. But we have to be fools sometimes. And hopeful.
There is a cost for everything – the biggest question is how much do you want to pay?
Lately, I have been researching a lot of things that seem random and disconnected – history, geography, post-traumatic stress, women’s issues, world class lies, isolation, and COVID. As a writer, mining for story is a regular event. The problem, this time, is the mass intake of information and not knowing what it will be used for. With all this extra knowledge, I feel like I should map directions to a new project. I am just not sure what that project needs to be. There is usually an arrow that lights up “go this way” but this time there is no arrow just continuous downloading of information.
Questions, I am asking myself:
If you find out something was a lie, how do you handle the material that you wrote based on that lie? Is it now considered a fictional account?
Do you settle for what you now know to be false and leave it as is or do you correct it?
What will it cost you to leave it? Sleepless nights, self-esteem, integrity, or simply a ripple in time…
What is the price of settling, if you do nothing and just move forward?
What is the cost if you go back with what you know now and rewrite? Rewrite. That’s a word that triggers anxiety, it’s like losing your whole identity. Paradigm shifts are hard especially when they are tied to your life and your work.
The act of writing can be an act of purging… I just want to always write my truth even when it changes, even when the bread crumbs that have just now become visible lead me to a place I had no idea existed.
I guess the price of settling to me is worth revisiting… it’s more about getting a sure footing in order to move forward and less about what it costs to get that sure footing…
This year we lost our garden shed. We didn’t misplace it, but the loss was complete and unmistakeable. From years of slow moving soil erosion, and a rotting roof, the entire structure fell in on itself. And on it’s side. And down the hillside.
And yes, this does remind me of some of the scripts I’ve worked on. Initial promise. Lots of adjustment. Then total ruin. At least that was the worst case scenario I had in my head.
But back to our shed. The original owner of our little cottage built the garden shed, some eighty years ago. We found out that he was quite a character, even if we never met him in the flesh. Early on, we did have a visit from him as a ghost. But I’ll get to that in just a minute.
This owner, we’ll call him Mister Cottage, was a caretaker for the golf course across the way. He was staff, maintaining the grounds and the buildings, and when they rebuilt the main clubhouse, he reused many of the discarded bits to make our house. This included the old wood frame windows, which shimmer, and tink with cracking sounds when it gets cold. The welded together metals cans that served as an exhaust vent in the attic. And the Buick hand brake that continues its use as a door handle to the deck. He was inventive and determined, and he was successful in building this little cottage with a massive fireplace and a wonky kitchen. The story goes that he died in this house. We should have paid more attention to that part of the story.
But Mister Cottage loved his shed. It housed his giant table saws, and tools and lumber. It didn’t see much use for tending a garden, but it was the engine of his industry at the cottage. And this year, after eighty years of rain, the occasional earthquake, and raccoons, the shed had enough.
The garden shed waits for it’s reincarnation
So, for my playwright friends. You know the part in the process, where we look at the arc of the play, how does it move along, what actually happens, and how does it get there? This is the beginning of all that. It is the beginning of all that hard work.
During this pandemic solitude, Eric and I spent several months rebuilding the little shed. It was a slow, labor intensive process, pieced out by how much we could afford to buy things, and manage the work. Like in writing: IT WAS SO MUCH WORK. Everything took longer, and was harder, more complicated than it seemed.
And there was a strange sense of rewriting history as we worked on it. The table saw had been given away, the cement floor broken up, the roof rebuilt. But the painting part. Yes the painting. That’s when the odd things began to happen.
I wanted to paint the entire shed white. A very nice paint. All white everywhere. Eric helped me set up all the painting props: the tarps, the brushes, the rags. And it took weeks. I would spend hours painting the walls, the sides, the ceiling. And the paint would disappear. As in not show up on the walls, sides or ceiling. I would paint it again. Same thing. I went through 5 gallons of white paint. I had the feeling that Mister Cottage did not approve. Because we had been through this issue of interior decoration years ago.
When we first moved into the house, it was – spartan. We repainted walls, filled it with paintings and mismatched furniture and cooked smelly curry dishes, and listened to loud jazz, and played charades with friends where there was lots of yelling and laughing and banging about.
We started to notice that sometimes, overnight, things were moved around the house. Certain paintings on the walls (and only the paintings with naked people) were always tipped to one side. Things left on the counter appeared on the table. Things on the table appeared on the counter. You could hear the floorboards in the hallway creak, as if someone were walking away from you. You could hear things go bump in the night. Lights suddenly turned on in a room when no one was there.
And sometimes Thaitu, the Abyssinian cat, would jolt up and watch something move across a room, eyes bugged out, and then she would look at us as if we were idiots for not seeing it. Whatever it was. And then one night. I heard bumping and scraping in the kitchen, and got up, and turned on the lights. They flickered for a moment, and Thaitu appeared next to my ankles, fluffed up like a porcupine. The room was cold, really weirdly cold. And I knew he was there, and he was making it known that he was not happy.
Thaitu let me scoop her up, and I held her as I realized I had to be the one to do this. So I told him. I let him know that we loved his little house, and appreciated everything he did to build a home that was lovely and we would always take care of it. And we were going to hang the artwork with the naked people on the walls. And we would have parties and loud music and smelly food. But he had to go now. Because it was our house now.
And he left. The noises stopped. The artwork was left alone. And we thought we were done. Until I started in on the garden shed. And the paint wouldn’t show up.
I would paint a coat of paint and it would vanish. As in not appear. After three coats of paint it finally started to show up.
Three coats of paint. No really. This is what three coats of paint looked like.
After five coats of this damn white paint – it started to appear. We hung new lights. We put up shelves. And hooks and things.
This did remind me, again, of writing plays. Sometimes you write for a character to appear. You write and write and still, they don’t seem to have a form, a color, a point of view. And then, after a lot of rewrites and hearing them talk out loud, they start to show up.
The garden shed starts to show its color. White.
So, here’s where the playwright’s metaphor gets stretched a little thin. The tools had to audition for their place in the shed. No, seriously. My thought was, we only had so much space in the shed. Only so many tools could be included.
Auditions held for The Garden Shed
But much to my surprise, and perhaps related to my hotly contested abandonment issues, every tool was included in the final organization.
All tools are included.The beginnings of the shed
So. There we are. The Garden Shed of Mister Cottage has begun a new life.
Very much like a new chapter. A new scene. A new act.
It means my garden can be supported with the tools, and the space and intention to do better work.
Just like a playwright.
And with that, I will go pour a glass of wine and celebrate.
Was it just yesterday – really – yesterday. Saturday, November 7. I felt like I had this heavy pressure on my heart for weeks. But on that day, starting at 8:36 in the morning ~ we had phone calls, and messages, and tweets, and emails and Zoom sessions with family and friends. And that’s when I realized I had been holding my breath.
The 2020 Election had been “called”. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had been declared the President-Elect and the Vice President-Elect.
I watched television from Tuesday, November 3 through Friday, November 6, waiting for the results. It was excruciating. I went to bed, then woke up, then slept on the lumpy couch to watch exhausted newscasters play with projected numbers and revised projected numbers. Could Biden’s numbers go up? Were all the votes counted?
It felt hard to take a deep breath. It was hard to look away, but it was also hard to keep watching. I felt like I had been here before, waiting, for a long time, for something catastrophic or incredibly wonderful to happen. Either or. It felt like four years ago.
Four years ago, Eric, my husband went through a stem cell transplant at the City of Hope hospital. We’d been watching his cancer numbers climb (70% of his bone marrow had multiple myeloma cancer cells) and after a lot of research and soul searching, decided a stem cell transplant was his best choice. That’s when I noticed I was holding my breath. A lot.
During the weeks of preparation for the stem cell transplant (pre-meds, an implanted Hickman port , dozens of blood draws) I learned that all this work they were doing was to get him ready, was to help him survive the days after the transplant.
All his white blood cells would be affected (okay, killed off) by the chemotherapy/transplant procedure, and then, afterwards, the white cells would start to build up again. That was the plan. There would be a countdown of how his body would recover from the transplant, how his white blood cells would come back. According to the treatment plan, 7-10 days after the transplant, we would see his numbers go up.
So he had the transplant. He seemed to do well. But after nine days in recovery at the City of Hope hospital, his white blood count was still 0 -.1 (A normal white blood count is 4.5 – 10)
This was not good. He had several blood transfusions. My twin sister was staying with me and everyday we kept watching his numbers, worried that his recovery wasn’t kicking in. If his white blood count was still 0 after ten days, he would have to be transferred to another hospital setting, and another treatment plan would be suggested.
That’s when I noticed that I was holding my breath a lot. Waiting. Waiting for the numbers to go up. Waiting for the white blood cells to kick in. Waiting for him to survive this stem cell transplant.
And on the tenth day after his transplant, his white blood count rose to .7 – not even 1.
And yes, it was not 1 or 2 or 4.5 – but it rose more than it had in the entire ten day recovery period. So he was allowed to go to the next stage of treatment. I was still holding my breath. After 14 days, he was allowed to go home. Where he has continued to survive, and to go on to different drugs and treatment plans.
But I remember holding my breath. Waiting for numbers. And this election felt like that.
So I followed twitter feeds, and the television, and my phone. We were watching the numbers go up. In Nevada. Arizona. Georgia. Pennsylvania. And this damn Electoral College voting.
On Saturday morning, November 7, at 1:35am I saw this on the television screen:
I decided that I better stop watching the television. I left the lumpy sofa and went to bed. The next morning, I woke up, turned on the television, made some coffee, and then looked at Twitter on my phone. That’s when I saw this:
It was 8:36am in the morning.
I wanted to take a deep breath, but I was afraid my lungs would burst.
I was afraid that I would blink, the moment would pass, and it wouldn’t be true. Or that it would be true, but that it would turn out to be corrupted, and then become sadly untrue .
It was a moment that I had thought would change everything. It was a moment that I thought would feel like relief and validation and a sense of accomplishment. But it didn’t feel that way. I just felt scared to breathe.
As the day went by, it seemed more real. It almost seemed true. I heard from family and friends, and saw dancing in the streets, and heard church bells ringing in Paris in celebration, and saw fireworks in London to cheer the election results. I was able to join the Zoom meeting of the playwrights workshop that I love, and we read scripts where we forgot about an election, and projected votes. And little by little, I felt better.
But truly, it wasn’t until I saw this, on Saturday night, that I was able to really breathe. And cry. And laugh.
The first woman to be elected Vice President of the United States: Kamala Harris
And then there was this image:
The first speeches from President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-Elect Kamal Harris
Here they are. Both of them wearing masks. At a historic moment in history, they are showing up, making the best of it, and trying to breathe.
A good example of what we need to do, to get by in this present moment.
